"The Whistled Language of Antia: Strategies for Revitalization"

Whistled speech is a rare form of speech, in which phonetic cues from spoken language are emulated in whistled form so that dialogues can take place over long distances. The whistled language of the village Antia in Greece is one of the only two such languages in Europe and is, unfortunately, severely endangered. In this talk I will discuss the details of what is meant by the term “whistled language”, will evaluate the endangerment situation in the case of Antia, will discuss the revitalization possibilities for the language, and will present facts on the latest realized efforts for the preservation of the language.

Speaker: Maria Kouneli, Yale college 2014